Opposing Forces Tug on Teachers

Whither teaching?

Is it blossoming into a true profession, with a body of knowledge and accepted practices that must be mastered? With salaries that rise with accomplishments?

Or is it a grim way station on the way to a real career that is more lucrative, more respectable or, at the very least, less frustrating?

Typical of the crosscurrents that rip through education, there’s evidence for both.

Support for the first scenario can be found in the career arc of Celeste Fobia-McClure, a first-grade teacher at a magnet school for music, the Hillcrest Center for Enriched Studies in the Crenshaw area of Los Angeles. Now in her 28th year on the job, she has spent the past seven mentoring younger teachers. Last month, she earned certification by the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards.

That accomplishment took her two tries and, she estimates, more than 400 hours in which she assembled lesson plans, critiqued student work, demonstrated her skills in a videotaped lesson and provided examples of her interactions with parents and colleagues. In addition, she had to pass tests on academic subjects and cognition.

“This has recharged my battery,” she says with infectious enthusiasm. “I’m so impressed with the quality of the people I worked with. To be part of this is the most rewarding thing I’ve ever done.”

The goal of the Michigan-based board, created in 1987, is to promote good teaching by figuring out what it looks like and then certifying those who do it. Support has come from major foundations and the federal government, which have poured more than $120 million into the effort.

Now, it’s achieving critical mass. In 1998, there were more than 1,800 board-certified teachers. This year, 3,000 more joined them.

Thirty-eight states and numerous local districts now offer incentives for teachers to participate. California, for example, hands out a one-time bonus of $10,000. And the Los Angeles Unified School District grants a raise of 15%. That’s led to 118 district teachers achieving certified status, a number greater than in 46 states.

Not everyone is enthusiastic. Some conservatives, notably Chester Finn Jr., a former assistant U.S. secretary of education for research, think the criteria are too squishy and philosophical and promote teaching methods that do little to raise test scores.

But Betty Castor, a former Florida commissioner of education and university president who now heads the board, says: “I want to sit down with Finn and show him what they have to know.”

There’s nothing easy, she says, about being prepared to write about 52 classics of literature, which the board requires high school English teachers to do. History teachers must, for example, be able to look at a political cartoon from, say, the 1920s, and write about the issue that prompted it and how it played out.

Castor was in town last week to promote board certification in California. The goal is to have 100,000 such teachers by 2006, and without participation here, that won’t happen. She also knows the board must prove that students of certified teachers learn more.

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Meanwhile, a counter-trend is at work: the growing number of teachers working under emergency permits, which in many cases is but a bureaucratic fig leaf that means they walked in off the street. Those numbers are so great--three in four teachers hired in L.A. Unified this year--that “on the job” training is becoming the norm.

The problem is that most don’t stick around long enough for that training to pay off, with as many as half quitting in the first year. Teaching in many urban areas has become a temporary job like waiting on tables while looking for that big break in show business.

It’s understandable why many quit. One such teacher, who works at a middle school in South-Central, was nearly in tears as she described her experience.

An aspiring screenwriter, she had never taught before and received only five days of training in things such as how to record attendance. When she arrived at the school this fall, she wasn’t even given a lesson guide. She had 10 books for 40 students. She’s been all but ignored by the principal and her more experienced colleagues. Students curse at her and threaten her. One student who is still in school there slapped a teacher.

Once she taught an entire period in a classroom with blood on the floor and desks--from a student fight. Janitors had been called but didn’t show up.

“It’s the most horrible, horrible place I’ve ever been in in my entire life,” she said.

Still, she needs the job, so she didn’t want her name used. She hopes to stick it out until at least after Christmas. But she’s not confident she can. Then, the revolving door will turn and some other aspirant will take her place.